The EU Court of Justice may rule in the upcoming weeks that linking to copyrighted material that was uploaded online without the owner's consent (pirated content, torrents, file lockers content, etc.) may be legal under certain circumstances.
According to a preliminary ruling requested by the EU Court of Justice in the case of Sanoma Media (Playboy) vs. GS Media BV (GeenStijl.nl), the Advocate General Melchior Wathelet has
advised the EU Court of Justice not to consider links to pirated sites to be copyright infringement.
Playboy vs. GeenStijl.
The whole case started a few years back, when a Dutch blog linked to a file locker where users could download leaked photos from a Playboy photo shoot.
Playboy requested the blog to take down the links, but the small site refused, so the publication had the page taken down through the site's ISP.
The blog then retaliated by linking to other sites that were linking to the file locker portal, and eventually, Playboy ended up suing the smaller site.
